OCZ announced today its Z-Drive, a PCI-Express based solid state drive that offers up to 1 TB of storage.

ZoomOCZ Technology first introduced the new Z-Drive PCI-Express SSD at the CeBIT 2009 expo held in Germany this past February, representing the company's latest premium solid state storage solution using the highly-fast PCI-Express interface (x4). The Z-Drive offers an onboard RAID controller, 256 MB of onboard cache, comes in three different capacities, and a MTBF of at least 1.5 million hours. The Z-Drive is also compatible with a wide range of operating systems including Windows XP (32 and 64), Windows 7 (32 and 64), and even Mac OS X 10.

â€œIt is our goal to deliver tailored SSD solutions for the complete spectrum of high performance applications,â€ said Eugene Chang, Vice President of Product Management at the OCZ Technology Group. â€œDesigned for ultra high performance consumers, the Z-Drive takes the SATA bottleneck out of the equation by employing the ultra fast PCI-Express architecture with a RAID controller and four Vertex controllers configured in four-way RAID 0 within an all-in-one product, making this solution ideal for applications that put a premium on both storage performance and maximum capacity.â€

The Z-Drive's three capacity offerings include 250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB. The 250 GB version offers reads speeds up to 450 MB/s, write speeds up to 300 MB/s, and a sustained write speed up to 200 MB/s. The 500 GB version is the fastest SSD of the bunch, providing read speeds up to 510 MB/s, and write speeds up to 480 MB/s; it too also has sustained write speeds up to 200 MB. As for the 1 TB version, its read speed is a bit slower, accessing data up to 500 MB/s. It also sports write speeds up to 470 MB/s, and a 200 MB/s sustained write speed as well. The overall dimensions of all three Z-Drive versions are 245mm x 124mm x 22mm, although the drive looks thick enough to take up two slots. There's also a fan on the bottom of the SSD to keep things nice and cool.

"Z-Drives feature exceptional speeds all while delivering lowered power consumption, ultra-fast data access, superior durability, and lower cost per ownership compared to conventional hard drives when factoring in the need for multiple drives and a separate RAID controller," the company said.

Although consumers can purchase OCZ products through online retailers including Tiger Direct, Newegg, eCost, CompUSA, and more, the Z-Drive was not available for purchase at the time of this writing. However, the OCZ Vertex Series 120 GB SSD for the SATA II interface costs around $370 USD, so it may be safe to assume that the 250 GB version of the Z-Drive PCI-Express SSD may be a bit higher in price. Still, with the super fast performance provided by the PCI-e interface and SSD technology, the price may very well be worth it.

PhotoFast's new G-Monster-PROMISE PCIe SSD claims to be the first in the industry to reach 1000 MB/s

ZoomPhotoFast's new G-Monster-PROMISE PCIe SSD--so new its not even listed on the official website as of this writing--claims to be the first SSD device in the industry to reach 1000 MB/s. In appearance alone, the device, connecting to an x8 PCI-e slot, looks huge, possibly eating up two or three physical spaces on the motherboard
. That may not be the case, as the actual dimensions are 10.63-inches x 4.75-inches x 1.71-inches, and weighs just over two pounds.

However, despite its seemingly unusual size, the SSD comes with a great benefit: super-fast read and writes of 1000 MB/sec and 1000 MB/sec respectively, making it around three to five times faster than standard SATA solutions thanks to the PCI-e connection. According to the company, the G-Monster-PROMISE will appear in three flavors: 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB. The drive also supports MLC flash, and offers 256 MB of ECC DDR II and SDRAM memory.

PhotoFast also revealed that the device has a MTBF of around 2,500,000 hours, and a data retention of five years. The SSD not only supports S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology), but has a high reliability based on its internal BCH 15-bit Error Code Correction technology. Unfortunately, the device isn't even available in Japan until the middle of May, and more than likely won't hit North American shores for a while. As for pricing, according to this flyer, the 128 GB version will cost a whopping $1600USD, and the 1 TB version will cost $4500USD. Ouch.